Inane commentary on a game that deserves far better

Sh*t, meet fan

Former Baylor women’s basketball star Brittney Griner says that Kim Mulkey, her college head coach, told players not to be open publicly about their sexuality because it would hurt recruiting and look bad for the program.

“It was a recruiting thing,” Griner said during an interview with ESPN The Magazine and espnW. “The coaches thought that if it seemed like they condoned it, people wouldn’t let their kids come play for Baylor.”

By dint of her celebrity status, to say nothing of her marketplace value to the Baylor brand, Ms. Griner has instantly altered the relationship between Baylor and its gay students, one that has been awkward at best and contentious at worst. Far from condemning her as a sinner, Baylor offered Ms. Griner “our admiration, appreciation and support,” as the university’s director of media communications, Lori W. Fogleman, wrote in an e-mail this week.

Plenty of caveats should be attached to this tolerance offensive. Baylor continues to omit sexual orientation from its nondiscrimination policy. The university’s official statement on sexual misconduct lists “homosexual acts” — as well as sexual harassment and adultery, among other behaviors — as “misuses of God’s gifts.”

Even so, if it is too soon to know with certainty whether Baylor’s public acceptance of Ms. Griner’s sexuality will extend to the John and Jane Queer of its rank-and-file student body, a more expansive kind of change seems possible thanks to what one might call the Griner Effect.